Blandings Castle and Elsewhere

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Book: Read Blandings Castle and Elsewhere for Free Online
Authors: P. G. Wodehouse
her as no father-in-law had ever pleaded
yet.
    A man who has had a disturbed night is not at his best on the
following morning. Until after luncheon Lord Emsworth felt
much too heavy-headed to do himself justice as a pleader. But a
visit to the flowers at Kensington Gardens, followed by a capital
chop and half a bottle of claret at the Regent Grill, put him into
excellent shape. The heaviness had vanished, and he felt alert
and quick-witted.
    So much so that, on arriving at the Savoy Hotel, he behaved
with a cunning of which he had never hitherto suspected himself
capable. On the very verge of giving his name to the desk-clerk,
he paused. It might well be, he reflected, that this daughter-in-law
of his, including the entire Emsworth family in her feud,
would, did she hear that he was waiting below, nip the whole
programme in the bud by refusing to see him. Better, he decided,
not to risk it. Moving away from the desk, he headed for the lift,
and presently found himself outside the door of Suite Sixty-seven.
    He tapped on the door. There was no answer. He tapped
again, and, once more receiving no reply, felt a little nonplussed.
He was not a very far-seeing man, and the possibility that his
daughter-in-law might not be at home had not occurred to him.
He was about to go away when, peering at the door, he perceived
that it was ajar. He pushed it open; and, ambling in, found
himself in a cosy sitting-room, crowded, as feminine sitting-rooms
are apt to be, with flowers of every description.
    Flowers were always a magnet to Lord Emsworth, and for
some happy minutes he pottered from vase to vase, sniffing.
    It was after he had sniffed for perhaps the twentieth time that
the impression came to him that the room contained a curious
echo. It was almost as though, each time he sniffed, some other
person sniffed too. And yet the place was apparently empty. To
submit the acoustics to a final test, his lordship sniffed once more.
But this time the sound that followed was of a more sinister
character. It sounded to Lord Emsworth exactly like a snarl.
    It was a snarl. Chancing to glance floorwards, he became
immediately aware, in close juxtaposition to his ankles, of
what appeared at first sight to be a lady's muff. But, this being
one of his bright afternoons, he realized in the next instant that
it was no muff, but a toy dog of the kind which women are only
too prone to leave lying about their sitting-rooms.
    'God bless my soul!' exclaimed Lord Emsworth, piously
commending his safety to Heaven, as so many of his rugged
ancestors had done in rather similar circumstances on the battlefields
of the Middle Ages.
    He backed uneasily. The dog followed him. It appeared to
have no legs, but to move by faith alone.
    'Go away, sir!' said Lord Emsworth.
    He hated small dogs. They nipped you. Take your eye off
them, and they had you by the ankle before you knew where you
were. Discovering that his manoeuvres had brought him to a
door, he decided to take cover. He opened the door and slipped
through. Blood will tell. An Emsworth had taken cover at
Agincourt.
    He was now in a bedroom, and, judging by the look of things,
likely to remain there for some time. The woolly dog, foiled by
superior intelligence, was now making no attempt to conceal its
chagrin. It had cast off all pretence of armed neutrality and was
yapping with a hideous intensity and shrillness. And ever and
anon it scratched with baffled fury at the lower panels.
    'Go away, sir!' thundered his lordship.
    'Who's there?'
    Lord Emsworth leaped like a jumping bean. So convinced
had he been of the emptiness of this suite of rooms that the
voice, speaking where no voice should have been, crashed into
his nerve centres like a shell.
    'Who is there?'
    The mystery, which had begun to assume an aspect of the
supernatural, was solved. On the other side of the room was a
door, and it was from behind this that the voice had spoken. It
occurred to Lord Emsworth that it was merely part of the
general

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